Speaker 1: Monster House Presents.
Speaker 2: It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before. A giant,
Speaker 2: hairy creature Part eight parts in Luckness, a twenty four
Speaker 2: mile long bottomless lake in the Highlands of Scotland. It's
Speaker 2: a creature known as the Luckness Monster.
Speaker 1: Monster Talk.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters.
Speaker 1: I'm Blake Smith and.
Speaker 2: I'm Karen Hey. They're Monster Talkers. Last Wednesday we recorded
Speaker 2: a roundup episode of Monster News and had some plans
Speaker 2: for talking about what's coming up soon and what.
Speaker 1: We've been working on.
Speaker 2: And then I got word that my friend, colleague and mentor,
Speaker 2: Joe Nicol, had passed away at the age of eighty
Speaker 2: and had decided to record this remembrance.
Speaker 1: In lieu of this week's plan content.
Speaker 2: I'll release our original recording in the feed next week,
Speaker 2: but for now, I just wanted to share some thoughts
Speaker 2: about Joe's life. Joe had been sick for a while.
Speaker 2: He was suffering with the sorts of ailments that a
Speaker 2: crew from eighty years of adventurous living and curiosity, and
Speaker 2: he knew something in this collection of symptoms was probably
Speaker 2: going to be the thing that took him out. But
Speaker 2: he was actively working on two follow up volumes to
Speaker 2: the Science of Monsters. I don't know if those projects
Speaker 2: will be forthcoming or not. I still need to talk
Speaker 2: with his typist to find out where he was on
Speaker 2: those projects. But if it's possible for me to help
Speaker 2: him become published, you'll hear about it here. If you've
Speaker 2: listened to Monstra Talk for a while, you know what
Speaker 2: a friend Joe was to me and to the show.
Speaker 2: He really loved the work that Karen and I do here,
Speaker 2: and he took a bunkiller approach to trying to guide
Speaker 2: us to what he thought was our best future. He'd
Speaker 2: say things like, don't just podcast, make sure you also
Speaker 2: write up your investigations and get them in print, because
Speaker 2: people are lazy and they won't cite your show, but
Speaker 2: a magazine article will get cited by other researchers.
Speaker 1: And that can help build your reputation. He was full
Speaker 1: of advice like that, and he had a life also
Speaker 1: full of adventure.
Speaker 2: I met Joe as an investigator of alleged cases of
Speaker 2: the paranormal or the supernatural, but over the years of
Speaker 2: our acquaintance, I learned a little bit more about the
Speaker 2: many other aspects of his life, and it might surprise
Speaker 2: you if you know how assiduously Joe avoided the Internet
Speaker 2: and computers and mobile phones to find out that he
Speaker 2: has a website. But he does, and if you go
Speaker 2: to a link on there called personas, you'll find more
Speaker 2: than a thousand jobs and certifications, advocations, hobbies, or other
Speaker 2: specializations that he explored over his life. His life is
Speaker 2: what you get when a person with unlimited curiosity manages
Speaker 2: to have the financial means to explore many of their
Speaker 2: intellectual whims or to tackle side quests that might intimidate
Speaker 2: a more fearful personality. I think the first case Joe
Speaker 2: and I collaborated on was the Watertown ghosts, and I'm
Speaker 2: glad that that was the one I reached out to
Speaker 2: him on because I had already done my homework. I'd
Speaker 2: run some seriously obscure leads to ground, and I pulled
Speaker 2: together a robust timeline of the known events. I spoke
Speaker 2: with the widow of one of the main investigators. I
Speaker 2: tracked down his remaining friends, I sent a research agent
Speaker 2: into the National Archives. I did deep photographic analysis. In
Speaker 2: other words, the first time I reached.
Speaker 1: Out to Joe about a case that I was working
Speaker 1: on was through.
Speaker 2: A very thorough effort, and he took me very seriously
Speaker 2: as an investigator. But over the course of acquaintance in
Speaker 2: a friendship, I don't it was a lot of things.
Speaker 2: But over the course of that I saw him work
Speaker 2: with other investigators who were not as far along in
Speaker 2: their projects or their case, or maybe they weren't his
Speaker 2: experience in their approach, and he treated them the same
Speaker 2: like a fellow investigator talking to a senior colleague or
Speaker 2: talking to a senior detective. He loved teaching and being
Speaker 2: a mentor, and he could be extraordinarily generous with his
Speaker 2: time and with his expertise.
Speaker 1: One of the.
Speaker 2: Biggest challenges to working with Joe was his almost comical
Speaker 2: rejection of modern information technology. But Joe wasn't a luddite.
Speaker 2: He would not hesitate to use a computer in a
Speaker 2: research setting, but where many people see these devices as
Speaker 2: communication tools or research age, he saw these things as
Speaker 2: insidious distractions that had misled many users into a false
Speaker 2: sense of accomplishment. If he did a research project and
Speaker 2: then posted a five or ten message thread on social media,
Speaker 2: Joe saw that as a waste of potential. He believed
Speaker 2: that printed journals and magazines would endure and be treated
Speaker 2: as serious scholarship, but that the Internet as a whole
Speaker 2: was just a honey trap that could make you feel
Speaker 2: like you'd done something meaningful, but which would then evaporate
Speaker 2: into the universe without leaving so much as a breadcrumb
Speaker 2: that you'd pass by that you'd see a mystery, or
Speaker 2: perhaps you'd even solved it. Joe Nicol led an extraordinary life.
Speaker 2: If you knew Joe through his paranormal or cryptozoological, or
Speaker 2: euphological or other mystery investigation categories, you might think of
Speaker 2: him as just that a clever guy who wanted to
Speaker 2: figure out mysteries. But in talking with Joe I learned
Speaker 2: so many more stories about what he got up to
Speaker 2: during his eighty years. I want to share a few
Speaker 2: of those things that maybe I haven't talked about here before.
Speaker 2: So Joe was very politically active, and he was a
Speaker 2: man of deep principles, and he hated the Vietnam War
Speaker 2: when it was going on, and he protested it, and
Speaker 2: he was there in nineteen sixty seven and when Abbi
Speaker 2: Hoffman tried to levitate the Pentagon and cast out demons
Speaker 2: of violence and oppression. And Joe was a poet and
Speaker 2: he had connections with the Beat poets, and he told
Speaker 2: me several times how honored he was to have been
Speaker 2: invited to perform some of his work at a reading
Speaker 2: that included some of the giants of that movement. And
Speaker 2: he hated the suppression of black voters in the Deep South.
Speaker 2: So he marched with Doctor King and he participated in
Speaker 2: dangerous efforts to try to get black voters registered, and
Speaker 2: he faced real dangers and real threats to his life
Speaker 2: while working on that. Eventually facing a draft board, like
Speaker 2: thousands of Americans his age, he fled into Canada, and
Speaker 2: this opened up another chapter in his life, where he
Speaker 2: lived as a political refugee and had to find work
Speaker 2: in various parts of that country. He wrote ad copy
Speaker 2: for the Canadian Sears Catalog, you know, which for younger listeners,
Speaker 2: was a little bit like Amazon dot Com, only instead
Speaker 2: of web pages. It had a huge paper book called
Speaker 2: the Seers Catalog and a winter holiday edition which was
Speaker 2: called the Sea Wish Book. Now, in my life, I
Speaker 2: like to read a lot of weird trivia and strange
Speaker 2: esoteric stories about different locations, and so I just have
Speaker 2: a lot of different bits of information about different parts
Speaker 2: of the world.
Speaker 1: Rattling around in my head.
Speaker 2: And one time I had read a article about life
Speaker 2: in the Yukon and about this eccentric man named Captain
Speaker 2: Dick Stevenson. I think that may have come from a
Speaker 2: rabbit hole when I was reading about the making of
Speaker 2: John Carpenter's movie The Thing. But regardless, the story goes
Speaker 2: that in the Yukon in the nineteen twenty the pair
Speaker 2: of trappers in a remote cabin had to deal with
Speaker 2: the case of frostbite and they chopped off the toe
Speaker 2: of one of the gentlemen whose foot had gotten wet,
Speaker 2: and they put the toe into.
Speaker 1: A bottle of alcohol.
Speaker 2: And decades later, Captain Dick Stevenson apparently found the toe
Speaker 2: preserved in a jar of alcohol in this remote cabin,
Speaker 2: and he brought it back to town and turned it
Speaker 2: into a drinking challenge. Thus began the legendary Yukon sour
Speaker 2: Toe cocktail challenge. There's even a rhyme that goes with it.
Speaker 2: You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow,
Speaker 2: but your lips must touch that gnarly tow now. So
Speaker 2: they're literally drinking a drink of alcohol that has a
Speaker 2: toe in it, so obscure and amusing, and it's one
Speaker 2: of the few stories I know about the Yukon. And
Speaker 2: one day Joe was telling me about being in Canada
Speaker 2: and he told me this story about he and another
Speaker 2: colorful local who caught a grizzly.
Speaker 1: Bear that had been sort of wandering around town.
Speaker 2: And that's a really interesting story in its own right,
Speaker 2: not what I'm gonna try to tell right now. But
Speaker 2: while he was talking about the Yukon, I said, Joe,
Speaker 2: have you ever heard of this Yukon ritual of drinking
Speaker 2: the toe? And for one of the first time, maybe
Speaker 2: one of the only times, Joe was completely shocked that
Speaker 2: I had sprung something on him that I knew something
Speaker 2: that was really obscure that he also knew.
Speaker 1: And he said, you know.
Speaker 2: About the Sauerto cocktail And I was like, yeah, have
Speaker 2: you heard of it? And he said, heard about it?
Speaker 2: I created the certificates that Captain Dick would give out
Speaker 2: to people who passed through the ritual. And then he
Speaker 2: proceeded to tell me how that he had moved to
Speaker 2: the Yukon during his Canadian exile and he became friends
Speaker 2: with Captain Dick and as a kid, Joe had made
Speaker 2: his living by doing hand painted signs around his small
Speaker 2: Kentucky town.
Speaker 1: So he painted signs for all kinds.
Speaker 2: Of businesses and did all kinds of advertising work.
Speaker 1: In that space.
Speaker 2: And now in Canada he was up there applying his trade,
Speaker 2: doing the same kind of work, calligraphy, article writing, signs
Speaker 2: for windows, that sort of thing. And then this opportunity
Speaker 2: to make certificates for the Sauerto Cocktail came up, and
Speaker 2: so Joe hand lettered them. It's an interesting, if dubious
Speaker 2: feet But I'm telling you this because Joe Nichol was
Speaker 2: not a simple person. He was a bigger than life
Speaker 2: character who, if you were thinking of this in role
Speaker 2: playing games terms, was definitely a multi class character, and
Speaker 2: you kind of have to wonder how many development points
Speaker 2: he had. But I mean, if you look at it
Speaker 2: in another way, he used his experiences to get experienced points.
Speaker 2: I mean, Joe didn't shy away from new adventures.
Speaker 1: That's who he was.
Speaker 2: If he had a chance to try something new, he
Speaker 2: would do it. Joe was also extraordinarily generous. He supported
Speaker 2: causes that he believed in with cash and with time,
Speaker 2: and I know I've probably told some version of the
Speaker 2: story before. But I wanted to start a publishing company,
Speaker 2: which I did, Monster House LLC. But I'm slow and
Speaker 2: methodical about this sort of thing. So I set up
Speaker 2: the company name, and then I started taking classes on
Speaker 2: how to digitally published books and audiobook. I read articles,
Speaker 2: I joined forums, I read all this material, but I
Speaker 2: wasn't ready to actually start yet. I didn't have my
Speaker 2: own manuscript or anyone else's, and I wasn't ready to
Speaker 2: call for submissions or anything. But I and I hadn't
Speaker 2: even told anybody what I was up to, because I
Speaker 2: don't like to tell my plans when they're that nebulous,
Speaker 2: because it's again and sometimes it takes me years to
Speaker 2: get any of my projects done. But then one day,
Speaker 2: not too long after I'd gotten all this stuff set up,
Speaker 2: I got a phone call from Joe and he asked me,
Speaker 2: out of the blue, if i'd be interested in publishing
Speaker 2: his latest book. And I said, well, Joe, who told
Speaker 2: you I was starting a publishing company, And he said nobody.
Speaker 2: I just thought this book's about monsters, it's write up
Speaker 2: your listener's alley. And so if I gave you the
Speaker 2: book and let you publish it. It could help support
Speaker 2: the show, and that's what he did, and that's what
Speaker 2: I did. And that book became The Science of Monsters,
Speaker 2: which is the first publication to come out through Monster House,
Speaker 2: which was released late last year. And sadly, it turns
Speaker 2: out that that volume will be the last book that
Speaker 2: Joe would publish during his life. He was working on
Speaker 2: two more volumes and I don't know if those are
Speaker 2: going to be completed or not. We'll have to wait
Speaker 2: and see. I have not had a chance to talk
Speaker 2: to his typist. Joe wrote Longhand and had someone type
Speaker 2: up his work, and she and I haven't been able
Speaker 2: to talk yet about where he was at. And honestly,
Speaker 2: it's right this minute. I'm just sad that he's gone.
Speaker 2: I'm not that worried about the projects, but I just yeah, anyway,
Speaker 2: we'll see. I'm writing this to say goodbye to a friend,
Speaker 2: a mentor, a guide, a supporter, a caring person who
Speaker 2: didn't suffer fools, but somehow put.
Speaker 1: Up with me.
Speaker 2: I think now, especially the world needs Joe's voice.
Speaker 1: I need his voice. And we talked on Monday.
Speaker 2: He was not doing well at all and I was
Speaker 2: deeply worried about him, and the next day he died.
Speaker 2: And I'm so sorry that I couldn't have been there
Speaker 2: for him, and I'm sorry that I won't be able
Speaker 2: to go to whatever memorial service he has, and I
Speaker 2: don't even know what those arrangements are going to be.
Speaker 2: But like a lot of people his age, he outlived
Speaker 2: most of his own friends and heroes.
Speaker 1: When some people passed.
Speaker 2: They leave a hole in the world shape like their
Speaker 2: unique place in the world. And when Joe died, he
Speaker 2: left a thousand holes because he had a thousand personas.
Speaker 2: He was not a religious person, and you might call
Speaker 2: him an atheist, but he preferred to say that he
Speaker 2: was a secular humanist. What's that people would ask him.
Speaker 2: He was like, Oh, that's just an atheist with a heart.
Speaker 2: He loved saying that, And Joe had a big heart.
Speaker 2: And it's going to take me a while to get
Speaker 2: over his loss. Even knowing that he was nearing the end,
Speaker 2: he just never stopped trying to solve mysteries or to
Speaker 2: make a difference in this world. He didn't believe in ghosts,
Speaker 2: he didn't believe in fairies or aliens, or monsters or
Speaker 2: dark conspiracies or ultra dimension. But he believed in you,
Speaker 2: he believed in me, he believed in his fellow travelers
Speaker 2: on Spaceship Earth. Joe believed that good people who fight
Speaker 2: for a good cause can win out over evil, even
Speaker 2: if sometimes it requires patience, or sometimes it even requires
Speaker 2: the occasional retreat. Joe Nickel believed in humanity. Well, I
Speaker 2: can't turn this into a biography. That's too big of
Speaker 2: a task. Joe's life is too big and expansive for
Speaker 2: me to go over in the length of a normal
Speaker 2: Monstra Talk episode or one hundred and maybe I'm not
Speaker 2: even the right person for that job.
Speaker 1: But check out the show.
Speaker 2: Notes because I'll put some links to Joe's many escapades,
Speaker 2: and also a link to support the Buffalo Museum of Science.
Speaker 2: You see, Joe recently passes his big collection of research
Speaker 2: and mementos from decades of investigation to the Museum for
Speaker 2: curation and caretaking. So Joe Nichols's collection of work will
Speaker 2: not be lost. Obviously, he's got his published books, but
Speaker 2: also so much memorabilia, personal writings, and correspondence. All these
Speaker 2: materials are now safely in the hands of the Buffalo
Speaker 2: Museum of science in the hands of curators and archivists,
Speaker 2: and if you want to remember Joe, a donation to
Speaker 2: that institute would surely be one way to keep his
Speaker 2: work preserved. And you can buy his many books online.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure Joe.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't mind me reminding you that the science of monsters
Speaker 2: in particular also helps Monster Talk. But it's ghoulish, in
Speaker 2: my opinion, to try and cash in when someone passes.
Speaker 2: But I think Joe really wanted Monster Talk to succeed.
Speaker 2: That's why he gave us that opportunity, and I'm extraordinarily
Speaker 2: proud that he trusted me with that project. I appreciate
Speaker 2: the many wishes of condolences that people have sent to
Speaker 2: me through social media. And I unfortunately don't know Joe's
Speaker 2: extended family. I do know, which I find this is
Speaker 2: kind of funny that when I asked him about who
Speaker 2: was looking after him, he said, well, I do have
Speaker 2: one relative who keeps a close eye on me, And
Speaker 2: he said.
Speaker 1: That's my aunt.
Speaker 2: She's one hundred and four, but she checks on me
Speaker 2: every week. And I don't know who's going to pass
Speaker 2: the bad news on to her, but I hope they
Speaker 2: do it gently and Joe wouldn't want us grieving his
Speaker 2: passing so much as he would want us to follow
Speaker 2: his example and to try to use logic and reason
Speaker 2: and evidence based thinking to constructively engage with those who
Speaker 2: have questions about this world. He blazed a path and
Speaker 2: left a trail worth following, and I only regret that
Speaker 2: at the end of the day he won't be there
Speaker 2: anymore to share his stories. I'll already miss him a lot.
Speaker 2: I'll continue to hold on to the wooden Nichols he
Speaker 2: used to give out. They are a final testament to
Speaker 2: how strongly.
Speaker 1: He believed he could make this world change more obstrutal
Speaker 1: this has been a Monster House presentation